


where we might begin

by uptillthree



Series: and living well [2]
Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Nicaise Lives, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Nicaise Lives, Post-Kings Rising, aka ive read all the nicaise lives fics and it wasnt enough and here i am, but it's very light i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-27 14:55:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10811271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uptillthree/pseuds/uptillthree
Summary: On the first day under Prince Laurent and King Damianos’ rule, the Regent’s body is draped from the gates of Ios. It isn’t particularly bloody. It’s undamaged except for a single, fatal red line across the neck. But it hangs limp from the gates, a dead, dishonored body.Nicaise takes a good long look at it, and thinks, You planned to take my head and serve it to the Crown Prince, and now he will be King. He takes a savage, exhausting sort of satisfaction in it. The Regent is dead.Nicaise spits on his pale feet.





	where we might begin

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a quick thing because I realized I was not actually finished with Nicaise in the last fic, but then the thoughts would just Not Stop and here I am with over 4k words for you? This is sort of rambling and with no real plot, just headcanons. Like, I just want to give this kid all the safety and love he deserves.
> 
> There are some references to the Regent's past manipulation/abuse of Nicaise and other pets, but nothing graphic.
> 
> Also, bother me about this series on twitter at @uptillthree.

i.

On the first day under Crown Prince Laurent and King Damianos’ rule, the Regent’s body is draped from the open gates of Ios.

It isn’t bloody. It’s almost undamaged— except for a single, fatal red line across the neck. But it hangs limp from the gates, a dead, dishonored body.

Nicaise makes himself take a good long  _ look  _ at it: the corpse of a man who had seemed so large when Nicaise had felt so small, had seemed a king whose death would never come; who had lied and lied and  _ lied, _ and made Nicaise believe the lies; who had placed his hands upon Nicaise’s body in one moment, and in that same moment, decided on Nicaise’s death— 

And Nicaise makes himself breathe, dizzy with the force of it. 

Nicaise makes himself  _ look, _ and  _ breathe,  _ and he thinks:  _ You planned to take my head and serve it to the Crown Prince, and now he will be King.  _ He thinks it until he can bring himself to believe it, taking a savage, exhausting sort of satisfaction in that knowledge. Above, a starburst banner is being waved, riding the wind on the highest tower. Beside it, the flag of a lion on a red sea. 

The Regent is dead.

Nicaise gathers saliva in his mouth and spits on the pale, disgusting feet. 

 

ii.

At the sound of bells, people have spilled out onto the streets. 

It happens slowly; it looks like the city is waking up after a long sleep. Children point at the brightness of the flags, high and powerful, red and blue and gold; men and women shout at the man, hanging, lifeless, from the open palace gates.

Nicaise has been the first to approach. He didn’t even realize.

Behind him, a holler.  _ Good on you, boy!  _ Nicaise still has to pick his way through the rough Akielon words to understand, but there is nothing difficult to understand about this kind of  _ triumph.  _

A barking laugh. A cheer. And then all of Ios must be cheering, Akielons and foreigners alike—  _ All hail Damianos! All hail Laurent! All hail the kings! _

Someone slaps him on the back, making him lurch forward; a young man, loud and laughing, shoving past him. He is dark-skinned — darker than Damen, even — and black-haired and grinning. “Hey, me too!” And he makes a disgusting hawking sound deep in his throat, and he spits down a great glob of phlegm and saliva onto the Regent’s unbreathing, well-dressed torso.

Nicaise’s mouth falls slightly open. 

_ How outraged the Regent would be _ , he thinks, and laughs loudly. His voice cracks a little, changing. He laughs louder. His eyes fill with tears. How absurd.

There are soldiers employed, of course, to see to it that the commoners do not stampede, do not cause trouble— but it doesn’t really seem to matter. Nicaise sees how men and children and even women, the boldest ones, rush to the front, to see the Regent and pay him back his injustice. Somewhere in the crowd, someone calls, fearless,  _ Where’s Kastor’s corpse, though?  _

Nicaise cannot  _ believe  _ Akielon audacity. It’s a sight to behold. He puts a hand to his mouth, but that does not cover his smile entirely, and he rushes back inside the palace.

 

iii.

By the time Damen is well enough to rise from bedrest and come to the dining hall for meals, the corridors have been abuzz with gossip. And Nicaise has caught all of it.

“I heard you lowered your sword when you saw Kastor,” he tells him gleefully.  _ “Exalted One.  _ I mean— that’s what they  _ say.  _ Just because he was your  _ brother. _ And you were sentimental. And  _ that’s _ why you were injured.” He means it as a taunt; it’s a funny little theory, likely carrying little truth— after all, Damen is an experienced warrior, apparently, whether Nicaise likes it or not. He wouldn’t be  _ that _ gullible.

But then Damen  _ blushes.  _ Embarrassment is a fucking  _ rarity  _ on that dignified, regal face. Nicaise is going to treasure it  _ forever.  _ “Well,” Damen sighs, turning to his meal. “He was.”

“What—” That takes a moment to absorb. “Is that actually what happened?” he demands, appalled. Unbelievable. Akielos is doomed. Laurent, who Nicaise well knows holds Damen in high regard (again whether Nicaise likes it or not), is  _ doomed. _ Vere is doomed by association. Nicaise almost laughs for real. “But that’s  _ insane!  _ He sent you off to slavery! In a place which  _ hated _ you! ”

“It truly is,” Laurent agrees under his breath. “Insane. Idiotic.  _ Imbecilic.”  _ And h e continues to rattle off a steady stream of insults, though there is no heat behind them. Damen— Damianos-Exalted— sighs again, miserable. Well, it  _ was.  _ Idiotic. A Veretian would never have hesitated.

Nearby, Nikandros of Ios snorts. He reaches forward to clasp Damen’s shoulder. “Bear the truth, Exalted,” he says, and Nicaise bursts into laughter.

 

iv.

“Delpha was won by Akielos!” Makedon’s booming voice is heard clearly even from outside the doors. Nicaise, out of sight, rolls his eyes. “It was gifted to Nikandros ever since!”

“And yet originally, it was Veretian land.” Prince Laurent’s voice. Nicaise wonders what it must be like to argue for your country in a place which was, until very recently, enemy territory. 

“Nikandros’ fair rule is an improvement to Delpha,” says Damen—  _ King Damianos  _ —calm and diplomatic. “Since removing it from Veretian rule, he has raised its income and bettered its trade.”

Nicaise can imagine his Prince’s dangerous smile. “Can you really call yourself a fair judge of that, being Akielon yourself?”

Damianos’ tone sharpens. “Can  _ you _ , being Veretian?”

Nicaise snickers behind his hand. He listens to the debate continue, rousing pride and honor and biases and distrust. They keep fighting over  _ land. _ It was the most entertainment he got in the castle these days, under this new, unlikely rule. 

“Your Highnesses,” Nicaise croons cheerily when they finally leave the hall, dipping his head in a cursory bow. 

“Listening in on council meetings again, I see,” Damen says, disgruntled, because Laurent has forced him to let it slide before. 

“I would  _ never _ ,” Nicaise says, grinning openly. “How  _ are _ the disputes going? Trouble in paradise?”

Damianos glares. 

“Hardly,” Laurent answers after a pause, tense and pretending not to be. “It is a very small hurdle. Barely a matter of dispute at all, in fact. After all, Akielos and Vere will be  _ sharing  _ the lands, in the near future. And Delpha is the center.” 

“What?” Nicaise squawks, then blushes. His voice cracks in the center.

Damianos’ glare gives way to a relaxed smile that looks more like  _ Damen.  _ “One kingdom, once...” He trails off, lost in thought.

Nicaise huffs.

 

v.

Declaring that “the boy eavesdrops on the council anyway,” Laurent commands Nicaise to attend every single council meeting in the palace. Several discussions of treaties, a few hectares of land divided; one union of kings. Nicaise hasn’t decided whether he thinks it’s possible. Anyway, he cares little.

No one likes the idea of the late Regent’s  _ pet  _ learning everything about the future of two nations, but no one can do anything about it. Damen might have forbidden it, if he wished, but apparently he has no qualms to this strange new whimsy of the Veretian king. 

The whimsy stops being strange to Nicaise when he realises what the first meeting he attends will be  _ about.  _

“I wish to be excused,” Nicaise hisses to Laurent. At the opposite head of the table, Damen has begun a discussion about freeing slaves. Nicaise doesn’t want to hear it. It is too close to home. Doesn’t it feel too close to home for Damen, too?— but then, the King of Akielos has literally no sense of shame.

Lady Vannes is contributing to the discussion by inquiring whether Veretian pets and contracts are so different from Akielon slavery— _ they  _ are _ different!  _ Nicaise wants to yell, but he wouldn’t know  _ how _ to explain it—and whether something should be done about that, too. She doesn’t seem pleased about it. She had a pet as well, after all. 

“Too bad, dear,” Laurent murmurs. “It would be the height of rudeness, to leave now.”

Nicaise scowls and rests his cheek insolently on his palm, sprawling to one side of his chair. He thinks about his contract with the Regent. It had begun almost four years ago, now. Well, until Nicaise broke it. “I hate you.”

 

vi.

Later, Laurent asks Nicaise to accompany him to the castle’s highest balcony. It overlooks the sea, which beats cruelly against the cliffs beneath them. Nicaise leans over the stone railing until more of his body is beyond the balcony than not.

Abruptly, Laurent shoves his shoulder. Nicaise shrieks, flailing, and pulls himself back. 

“I could have fallen,” he says, unable to keep the accusing note out of his voice.

“No, you wouldn’t have,” says Laurent, rolling his eyes— a relaxed, unkingly gesture, from a prince such as Laurent. “And if you had, I would have pulled you back just as quickly. Don’t do that again.”

“Says  _ you,” _ replies Nicaise scornfully, for lack of a better reply. But he keeps quiet and does not lean over the railing again.

An easy silence washes over them. Laurent looks upwards, towards the sky and the horizon; Nicaise’s gaze is drawn to the cliffs and waves beneath. 

“We cannot,” Laurent says suddenly, “be hasty about it. Nor can we afford to draw it out.” Nicaise looks at him, confused, but Laurent isn’t finished. “If we simply free the Akielon slaves at once— as some members of the Council here would do, just to have Damen’s wish out of the way— it would hurt the slaves more than help them. They would have no currency. They would not know how to live on their own terms, to make decisions. They have been trained in slavery since birth— how can they be expected to do anything else?”

Nicaise’s spine has stiffened. He doesn’t care much for this line of discourse.

“The same, I believe,” Laurent continues, “for some, if not all, of the pets in Vere. The concept of it is, essentially, an imbalanced relationship. It is also so deeply ingrained in our culture that it may take an age to demolish. Some pets, certainly, will leap at the idea of a free life. Some masters, certainly, will despise that idea, having to break the contract. Some pets—” Laurent’s keen eyes slide to Nicaise “— will not _wish_ to leave their masters.”

The sea breeze is cool, even in summer, but Prince Laurent’s eyes are burning a hole in his face. Fuck  _ you.  _ “I left the Regent,” Nicaise spits.

“I know that,” Laurent says, looking away carelessly. “And not a moment too soon. But make no mistake,” he adds, just as Nicaise clenches his fists (a high balcony overlooking deadly cliffs and angry waves is not the best place for this conversation), “I am _ glad _ that you are here. And that you left of your own volition.”

Nicaise’s gaze returns to the sea. He frowns.  _ The Regent was going to kill me,  _ he does not say, because Laurent already knows. Does the threat of murder count as ‘his own volition’?

“So? What do you think?”

Nicaise blinks. “What?”

“How— and where— do you think we should begin?” Prince Laurent is all business. 

“I… I don’t know.” 

“Akielos, I think, would be easier. To the slaves we will offer income, and support until they learn to decide for themselves what to do with it. If necessary, they may earn their keep as servants or common workers—  _ free _ people, still. There will, of course, be a little upheaval.” Laurent’s voice speeds a little, his thoughts running. “But Damen can handle that easily. He has won his people’s hearts already, after Kastor’s shameful little stunt as king. It can be done. But Vere is— more difficult. There will be more opposition. I have not cultivated trust in my people as Damen has for years before his rule.” 

_ I think you tried,  _ Nicaise thinks.  _ Only, the Regent destroyed it at every turn.  _

Laurent sucks in a deep lungful of ocean air. “It’s a very difficult task. But I refuse to do it only halfway. It will be done. One way or another.”

Nicaise isn’t sure what to say to that; Laurent seems to have said everything already. But the king seems expectant. For— his opinion?

The silence returns, longer this time. 

“I think,” Nicaise begins. Laurent’s gaze swings back to him, pleased, and Nicaise bites the inside of his cheek. “I think that… you will be a much better king than your father. And the Regent. And… the king your brother could’ve been.” 

Laurent’s spine straightens a fraction, mouth parting slightly. If Nicaise had not been watching so closely, he might not have noticed. 

He swallows. “I’ll think,” he says to his king, “about… what you said, about… where we might begin. I’ll tell you what I think about it. I’m not sure yet. But, I am sure, about— what I just said.”

He walks quickly, leaving Prince Laurent on the balcony alone, embarrassed at himself. 

 

vii.

Laurent orders Nicaise to study enough to become enthralled with books, and then heartily sick of them. 

(Nicaise enjoys geography most.)

Nicaise realises that one day, the capital of both Vere and Akielos will be not Ios or Arles, but Delpha. The heart of both countries, surrounded by fortresses—  _ Marlas and Ravenel and Fortaine _ — if you erased the ragged lines on the atlas, if you happened to look at it as one kingdom. 

He also realises, distantly, that Laurent is sort of— slowly teaching him to be, or making him into... a royal advisor. Or councilor. It’s not… He doesn’t  _ mind,  _ exactly, because if that’s what Laurent wants in exchange for everything he’s actually  _ done  _ for Nicaise— well. It’s a very tiny price to pay, and also, Nicaise doesn’t know what he’ll do if he ever has to leave the palace and actually  _ work, _ like as a  _ citizen _ — he is terribly, terribly unequipped for that. But he’s also not sure how the king plans to pull it off. 

Nicaise has neither money nor power nor royal blood, and everyone in the palace of Vere and in the halls of Akielos knows Nicaise as the Regent's pet. 

He tries not to think about it.

 

viii.

The training grounds of Ios is a wide, even circle. The Royal Guard of both nations drift back and forth the ring, whether for daily training or simple exercise. 

Damen and Laurent are seen there often as well. It is a sight to watch, say the soldiers, and well worth a wager. Usually it would be an insult, an excuse for war, for a king to be disarmed by another— but they are so evenly matched, and some soldiers have seen them equals in battle before, as Prince and Captain. Nicaise is sure even the noblest soldiers (even, say, Jord or Pallas) have exchanged coin over who would win, whenever the two royalties duelled in the arena. He’s never sure himself.

Nicaise has never sparred in the open space. Not when he is still so unskilled. But he finds himself drifting to it often—  _ not  _ in any sort of longing. Never. He is learning the sword only out of necessity, after all, and because Prince Laurent wishes him to.

But that isn’t what he says when Laurent catches him, watching the prince himself practice the most basic of forms. No, what comes out of Nicaise’s mouth, instead, is, “Spar with me. Your Highness. ” 

Damen, who had either not noticed or not cared about his presence before, looks like he wants to forbid it for the good of all of them. Laurent looks pleasantly surprised— the way a snake might be pleasantly surprised when a mouse decides to enter his nest willingly. Nicaise is an  _ idiot.  _

“All right,” says the Veretian prince easily. It is early, barely dawn; the arena is empty of soldiers. “But we use practice swords.”

Laurent’s style of fighting is light, fast, and deadly. Even now, Nicaise can tell the king is not fighting at his full strength or strategy. His parries are bored, his attacks are lazy. A small smirk curls his mouth. And he is keeping even ground while Nicaise’s pulse is lightning quick and his lungs are afire. Too late, Nicaise realizes that the short, sharp, parrying jabs Laurent has been throwing at him have subtly, quietly been easing Nicaise’s wooden sword out of his grip. 

“Not bad,” the prince tells him, when the sword clatters away. Nicaise had barely lasted a minute. Maybe less. “For a month-old swordsman."

“You were going easy on me,” Nicaise accuses. 

“Oh, at least you noticed.” Laurent raises his brows. “Why the indignance? Would you like us to go again, this time with both of us using  _ all  _ our skill?”

Nicaise flushes. “Next time,” he says, tone lofty. From outside the ring, King Damianos laughs, not unkindly.

 

ix.

Once, Nicaise sees a cloaked figure run past his quarters.

It nearly frightens him to death (which is not something Nicaise would ever admit). 

He should have left it to the guards. Or he should have alerted Laurent. But it was just— the cloaked figure was a small one. A child. 

Nicaise’s hand clasps around the hilt of a knife; his legs begin to run. 

He has been growing, steadily, in his time here in Akielos. His legs are longer, more finely boned; the training in the arena has only hastened the process. (The Regent might have been disgusted.) 

So he is faster.  He catches the child around the wrist, makes sure he sees the knife blade as a warning. Then he balks:

The child was the Regent’s pet.

It takes him a moment to place where he has last seen this boy. It was in the Akielon hall. The day the Regent met his death. Nicaise barely caught a glimpse of him, but the boy had been beside the Regent, perched, almost angelically, upon a stool; and then, later, he was dragged outside, forbidden to witness the murder. 

Nicaise hates him.

“What are you  _ doing _ here?” He did not mean to  _ snarl  _ at the boy (perhaps a little). But he hates him. His—  _ replacement.  _ He can’t stomach the sight of him, suddenly. His grip on the boy almost loosens.

The boy’s eyes are narrowed and trained on the blade in Nicaise’s hand. He keeps trying to pull away. “I’m leaving. I don’t like it here,” he sneers. The sneer and tone combined, coming from a child’s voice, all of it is... a little like looking into a mirror. “No one  _ cares _ about me here.” A pout. Childish. 

_ You wouldn’t have lasted half a year under the Regent,  _ Nicaise thinks, cruelly, and then he hates himself.

“Do you think the Regent cared?” he sneers back. He hopes the boy does not see the mirror, too. “He didn’t. You— you were just—” He can barely get the words out, he’s so angry. (When he is older he will know, slowly and with time, that it was the Regent he was livid at. So many years.) “You were a  _ toy  _ to him. To throw away.”

_ “You’re lying!”  _ The boy’s shout is high and loud. Nicaise wants to tell him to  _ shut up _ . “He loved me, and then they killed him!  _ Fuck _ you!”

It’s a little disgusting to hear a young boy swear with such vehemence. But it is superficial; Nicaise didn’t know exactly how old this kid was, but he’d bet all his jewelry that  _ he _ knew how to talk a lot worse filth when he was that age. Worse, and far more shocking than the vulgarity, is the guileless faith in the man who had toyed with both of them. 

(Sometimes, Nicaise grieves, not for the Regent but for his own, long-gone devotion to the Regent, because it was never deserved, and all his young, stupid faith, and all the Regent’s words which Nicaise had, also stupidly, placed trust in.)

Again, the mirror.

(Shattered, now.)

“Were you staying here the whole time?” he asks instead. “Why haven’t I seen you?”

“I tried to escape,” the boy says, sullen. “So the stupid king locked me up. And then he kept  _ talking _ to me, and trying to get me to talk to  _ him,  _ and giving me  _ food!”  _ The boy’s face scrunches up in hatred. It makes him look ugly. “Well, fuck  _ him,  _ too!”

What a fucking  _ embarrassment,  _ to be holding this kid’s wrist while he cursed out the man who would soon be King of Vere. In the palace of Akielos, no less. Nicaise wonders whether the boy is like this in Laurent’s presence, too. An image flashes in his brain: the Prince offering this kid food and water, and the little shit of a boy shouting  _ Fuck you!  _ in his Majesty’s face, and Nicaise barely manages not to laugh himself into hysterics. 

“Don’t talk about him like that,” Nicaise says, “when you’re out where others can hear. You’ll get yourself killed on the block. Shut the  _ fuck _ up and come with me.” 

He has to drag the flailing boy almost the whole way back to where he came, short legs kicking at him and the arm not in his grasp trying to punch his face. He has to raise the knife up so many times in warning it’s practically not even a threat anymore, until a passing guard sees the spectacle and takes him off his hands.

When he walks back to his own rooms, he feels wrung out. His mind keeps returning to the boy, which the Laurent had, apparently, not forgotten about. Nicaise certainly had. The kid had sounded so hateful when he talked about Laurent, Crown Prince Laurent who had remembered the boy on the Regent’s stool (nothing slipped past that mind, Nicaise was finally convinced) and remembered to provide him shelter and food and clothing with no price, and all the while the kid yelled garbage about him.

Nicaise sighs. Wrung out. 

But he thinks he understands now, what some people (very few) might mean, when they call Laurent of Vere  _ kind _ .

 

x.

Against his own wishes, Nicaise ends up thinking about the Akielon slaves a  _ lot.  _ They’re very different from Veretian pets, he decides. They are uneducated and naive and mindless, and— and it wasn’t even their fault. None serve in the palace anymore. But the entire concept is enough to make him feel a little sick.

Sometimes, however, he ends up thinking about Vere, too,  _ (Ancel who’d die for status, Aimeric who  _ did,  _ and then there was he, Nicaise, who was never meant to survive his contract)  _ and he starts to feel twice as sick.

 

xi.

Laurent tells him, “You were better at this than I was at your age.”

Nicaise startles. “What?”

_ “Politicking. _ When I was thirteen— fourteen, whatever—most everything flew over my head.” A derisive, self-deprecating laugh. “You’re coping much better.”

_ Auguste would have just died then, when you were thirteen,  _ Nicaise thinks. “Thank you,” he says instead. 

Prince Laurent has changed much in Akielos. Nicaise thinks this often. Or, perhaps, it is just because there is no longer any Regent for him to scheme against now. His laughs are more genuine than cruel, now; there is less to see of that poison tongue and belittling gaze, suspicious of everything. Now, he wears the crown well, grace and wisdom and regality. He wears  _ chitons.  _

Damen (‘King Damianos’ still feels weirder in Nicaise’s brain than ‘King Laurent’) is different too. There is none of that coiled-tight twitchiness from Vere, the look in his eyes like cornered prey. Here, in his home, it has simply vanished, and in its stead is the stance of a king. Nicaise thinks if he tried to stab him with a fork again he would simply catch it, like the spear in the okton.

A sense of safety—  _ that _ changes people.

Nicaise is learning how it must feel.

(Has  _ he _ changed, too?)

 

xii.

Once, Nicaise receives a summons to Laurent’s place of study. “Nicaise,” Laurent says, in a voice far too cheerful to be innocent, “I wish to request something of you.”

“Technically, all your ‘requests’ are commands,” Nicaise says flatly, because they are alone and no one else will hear his rudeness, and Nicaise (only a little) misses being able to rib Laurent like this. “Since you’ll be king.”

Laurent laughs. “Oh, but this one is a request.” To Nicaise’s horror, he turns to a row of books arranged on a nearby shelf, selects several, and dumps them into Nicaise’s arms.

It gets worse. “The boy needs an education,” Laurent says. Nicaise immediately knows which one. “I want you to be the one to tutor him.”  _ Too fucking bad. _ Nicaise wants to whack the books in Laurent’s pretty princely face, but we can’t all have what we want. “If you like.”

Oh, if he  _ likes.  _ Laurent can afford hundreds of tutors but instead he has asked  _ him. _ Nicaise does owe Laurent his life. He  _ does  _ have a tiny sense of dignity. He’s not going to say  _ no,  _ and not to something so… small. Trivial. 

He grits the words out. “Yes, Highness.”

Laurent laughs softly as Nicaise leaves the room. Nicaise wants to stomp his feet on the way out, too. “Thank you, Nicaise.”

 

xiii.

Nicaise, gingerly, sits near the boy. The Regent's last pet. He doesn't sit next to him; that would be ridiculous and presumptive. He would probably be stabbed with a fork. Nicaise sits a fair distance across the boy, where they both see each other clearly. 

“Prince Laurent told me to tutor you,” he says.

“I know,” the boy says, glowering. Nicaise watches him a moment. The boy will probably rip the books to shreds. He stands.

"Come. I'll teach you how to fight with a knife."   



End file.
